This is an ironic post. My normal complaint is religiously-bigotted Muslims persecuting non-Muslims. However, the most recent situation that occurred revolved around Tunisia (ie not Saudi Arabia). In the same way that Canadians will beat you to within an inch of your life if you call them Americans, I suspect (haven't met enough to know for sure - but the ones I did meet were very upset about being associated with Al Qaeda) that the Tunisians are equally keen to have their own identity too.

Two things happened at the same time:

1. The Foreign Minister (ie dictator's crony) of Tunisia was implying that Al Qaeda might take over Tunisia now.

2. A Muslim in the west told me he was upset that only bad things in the Koran are ever shown in the media. I realised that from his perspective it would be like Christians being continually being told how bad they are for all the horrible things in the bible. Christians have a series of cool lines they use to wriggle out of those, and the (good - even if minority) Muslims don't seem to have a good escape route of their own.

Note that what I have tested at length is Muslim adherence to the letter of the Quran. I have gone to chat rooms and asked e.g. Indonesian Muslims whether they have any Christian friends. Of course they do, and they're as proud about their religious tolerance as Christians are. I then hit them with 5:51 which says to not be friends with the Christians, and try to get them to agree to ditch all their Christian friends. Obviously they've (roughly) hit the principle of non-contradiction where they need to either admit that the Koran isn't the word of God, or they need to agree to ditch their Christian friends. Reality is that they don't follow the Koran at all. They basically follow their own personal religion, and you'll have as much luck convincing Christians to stone their own children to death (as per Deuteronomy 21:18-21) because their kid had just shown signs of stubbornness.

Anyway, when I saw innocent, non-bigotted Muslims being discriminated against (and put myself in their shoes to see how I would feel), I decided to use my decades of debate against Christians to give the Muslims a similar escape route:

Note that in Australia, religious bigotry is nearly non-existent. Our 3rd-longest-serving Prime Minister (Bob Hawke) was an atheist and I never heard a single person say "I'm not going to vote for him because he's an atheist". Unfortunately the same can't be said about Americans, who are willing to tolerate everything, even after 9/11, but not atheism. Even though I am generally a supporter of Fox News and the substantiated arguments, I watched Bill O'Reilly conflating atheism with Stalin (which is about as honest as conflating Christians with Nazism based on Hitler's upbringing) completely unaware of just how much of a fool and a bigot he was showing himself to be.

Note that this forum is not for arguing about whether people should be Christians/Muslims/whatever in the first place. There is a separate forum for "dogma" if you want to get rid of the "Holy Books". The reality is that people have an innate right to call themselves xyz religion, so long as they don't actually inflict horror on others by suddenly discovering Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (it doesn't come up at Sunday school very often) and start trying to implement it. We could discuss ways of protecting against that theoretical possibility though. The current "separation of church and state" combined with cultural changes is probably enough already. But ultimately freedom is too precious to leave to anything with the word "probably" in it. "provably so" is the phrase I'm after, even if it's not possible to prove that the proof doesn't have a flaw.

Anyway, perhaps that can be used to give some ideas on a position paper on religious bigotry, given that atheism and Christianity are covered, so evidence of Muslim bigotry can probably be found somewhere too if we look really hard? Comments?

Just to correct you: Correct Translation of 5:51 is "O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies." - There is no word about to don´t take them as friends

It should also be noted that Quran has used the words 'the Jews' and 'the Christians' making it very clear that it is a specific group of Jews and Christians and this verse is not a general prescription. The attitude of these people has been explained further in the following verses for instance:

"O you who have believed, take not those who have taken your religion in ridicule and amusement among the ones who were given the Scripture before you nor the disbelievers as allies. And fear Allah , if you should truly be believers. And when you call to prayer, they take it in ridicule and amusement. That is because they are a people who do not use reason." (Quran 5:57-58) (http://quran.com/5)

As it can be clearly seen, the Jews and Christians mentioned above are those 'who have taken your religion in ridicule and amusement.'

In view of the above explanation, I believe these verses should not be taken to be a general directive of our relationship with Jews and Christians. Instead our relationship with the people of other faiths should only be avoided when it becomes harmful for Muslims, and otherwise we should feel free to enjoy a comfortable relationship with our Jew and Christian brothers and sisters